Market Studies: Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action

Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes, tools and methods in a single, comprehensive volume. Topics covered include: market organization and design; performativity in and around markets; valuation; market places and spaces; methods that may be utilized in studying markets; the field's relation to adjacent disciplines; the future of markets. Deploying a sensitivity for the socio-material constitution of markets, the authors put market practices at the centre of inquiry and offer insights into the future and potential impact of market studies research. The contemporary, practical and interdisciplinary approach is strengthened by multiple examples of original empirical research into markets.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: the multiple pasts, presents and futures of markets and market studies; Part I. Market Designs and Market Misfires: Introduction; 1. Tinkering in markets for collective goods: experiments, exceptionalities and the case of HIV medications; 2. Market engineering: a new problem for market studies?; 3. Disentangling marketisation from assetization? The case of the market for social investments; 4. Factishing a market; 5. The dynamics of ongoing market maintenance through centralised market work; Part II. Post-Performative Approaches to Studying Markets: Introduction; 6. The performativity test; 7. Performative struggles and theory-practice decoupling in the design and the implementation of a market-based instrument: French tradable certificates for energy efficiency; 8. Nudging as a tool of market design and profitability: performativity in the age of behavioural economics; 9. The social life of simulated markets: a market studies approach Stefan Schwarzkopf; Part III. Valuation: Introduction; 10. Facets of worth: valuation processes in the polished diamond market; 11. Biomass qualification and the dynamics of market framing; 12. Does forgetting make markets? Historical silence in the political risk insurance market; 13. Vintage steel bicycles and a theory of value bricolage; 14. Valuation in the market for high-end audio: hunting 'monsters' in analogue disks; Part IV. Markets in Motion: Places and Spaces: Introduction; 15. Going to a safe place: (re)qualifying market sites in the context of a global pandemic; 16. #CovidArcadia: the pandemic conditions of the emergence of digital-affective atmosphere; 17. Making space and beating a path to a marketplace: the uneven spatial ordering of Christmas tourism markets; 18. Small trading circuits and micro-logistics in pericapitalist markets; Part V. The Secret Life of Market Studies Methods: Introduction; 19. Method contestations in marketography: from 'fly on the wall' to methods 'on the fly'; 20. The camera is an engine: ways of seeing perspective, context and reflexivity to make and shape markets through innovative research practice; 21. Design methods and market studies: co-design methodology as performative research; 22. Investigating market dynamics through the online trade press. A methodological reflection; 23. Digital texts as market actors: a semantic network analysis; Part VI. Broadening the Perspectives in Market Studies: Introduction; 24. What about gender? An invitation to Market Studies scholars; 25. Marketing work and labour; 26. Market system dynamics: key processes, biases and research opportunities; 27. A vocabulary for analysing market change processes; Part VII. Future (Im)Perfect Markets: Introduction; 28. Digital platforms and (im)perfect market futures; 29. Reconfiguring visibility and participation in a digitalizing world; 30. Market futures and the role of market studies in the making of circular economies; 31. Making room for care in markets and in market studies.

About the Author :
Susi Geiger is a Full Professor of Markets, Organization and Society in the College of Business at University College Dublin. Katy Mason is Professor of Markets and Management in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at Lancaster University. Neil Pollock is a Professor of Innovation and Head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group at the University of Edinburgh Business School.

Review :
'Over the past twenty years, the burgeoning field of market research has profoundly transformed our view of economic activity. This book, written by leading researchers, presents its main achievements and outlines an intriguing research programme for the next decade. A must-read for anyone wishing to better understand and master the role played by the economy in the future of our societies.' Michel Callon, Professor of Sociology, École des Mines de Paris 'Market Studies offers us stimulating and increasingly influential ways of understanding markets. But the field's very richness and diversity makes a reliable guide to it necessary. Here, at last, is that essential roadmap – crucially, a forward-looking one.' Donald MacKenzie, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh 'How is a new academic field established? Performatively, of course. The world of Market Studies is carefully composed in this volume through its histories, methods, means of market making and valuation practices. But this is not just a historical account. This is a Market Studies manifesto. A future of new methodological, conceptual and critical concerns is on offer, to be performatively accomplished by Market Studies scholars.' Daniel Neyland, Co-Director of Bristol Digital Futures Institute